


In Limine

by bosspigeon



Series: A Dangerous Woman [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character of Color, First Meetings, Followers of the Apocalypse, Gen, Sass, Scars, Smoking, and then he disappears, arcade being a snarky shit, being shot in the fucking head, brief mention of boone, danger is a wasteland cowboy, female courier/arcade friendship, from you know, it is a mystery, old mormon fort, pov arcade gannon, the beginning of the no hetero bros, the courier actually has a scar, this is why you have no friends, where did he go, yes her name is danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5288114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bosspigeon/pseuds/bosspigeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She calls herself Danger, of all things, and in spite of every bit of common sense he may have screaming at him, he can't help but find her interesting. The beginning of the wild, dangerous (pun fully intended) ride that is being friends with Courier Six.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Limine

She blows into Freeside like an errant tumbleweed, only less talkative, with an equally taciturn sniper tagging along after her like a particularly sullen shadow. Within a month, she’s in good with Freeside residents, NCR citizens, Julie Farkas, and the King, of all people. How she does it all, Arcade isn’t quite sure, seeing as she grunts more than she speaks and carries herself with the lazy, but subtly dangerous of lope of a Wasteland coyote, all long strides and shifting dark eyes.

The first time he meets her, she’s just finished dealing with Julie, dropping off whatever medical supplies she’s managed to scavenge. She spends some time ambling around the Fort, not really chatting, just sort of. Hovering. As a newcomer, the others had watched her with the same wariness they gave any other well-armed Wastelander that happened to blow through, but now they wave, smile, even ask her how she’s doing, even if her only response is, predictably, a grunt or a low “Doin’ fine, thanks.”

When she finds her way into his tent, she takes a minute to just stare at him. It’s unnerving, to say the least. That is, until she pats down her pockets for an engraved silver lighter and a battered cigarette. She pops it between her chapped lips and cups a grimy, gloved hand around it as she fumbles with the lighter’s wheel. Her hands shake ever so slightly, and a grumbled curse makes its way past the stained cigarette filter until she manages to get the tip smoldering.

He waits for her to take a slow, deep drag, blowing it outside the tent’s flap, before he says, as snidely as he possibly can ( _Gannon, this is why you have no friends_ , he reminds himself), “I hope you are aware those will kill you.”

She takes another puff, then another, sucking on the filter long and deep before blowing smoke from her broad, flat nose. “My Mammy lived t’be a hunnerd’n twenty years old,” she replies, voice deep, gruff, and ponderous.

At first, he’s just surprised to actually hear her speak, much less respond to his obnoxious chiding, and he’s so caught off-guard at first he doesn’t realize what he’s walked into. “Smoking?” he asks quizzically.

Another deep inhale, a slow exhale, and, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth with practiced ease, she retorts, “Mindin’ her own damned business.”

He laughs, high and startled, eyebrows shooting to his hairline. There’s a twist to her mouth, a sly little smirk, and that spark in her droopy dark eyes just makes him laugh harder. She waits for him to stop laughing before she blindsides him once again with her raspy Southern drawl.

“Y’look like you can handle yourself,” she says, pointedly eyeing the energy pistol on his hip.  
  
“What of it?” he asks, wariness prickling suddenly at the base of his neck. He doesn’t like that she’s caught him so off guard, and he suddenly notices that if she just straightened up her stooped shoulders and lifted her head a bit, she’d have a good six inches on him height-wise.

She keeps her movements pointedly slow and easy as she reaches up and draws her battered black hat off her head, as if keenly aware of his sudden skittishness. He can’t help but cringe at what’s underneath.

Her head is shaved, wiry hair cropped neatly to a prickly fuzz, and it makes the scar stand out all the more starkly. It’s an inch or so shy of dead center of her forehead, an ugly knot of fresh pinkish tissue with a few precise surgical scars branching out to follow the curves of her skull. It is, unmistakably, a gunshot wound, one that  _should_ have killed her. But it didn’t, by some miracle or sheer dumb luck he can’t quite say.

“I got a few bad habits,” she says with a wry twist of her mouth, putting out her cigarette on the palm of her thick leather glove. “The Mojave’s likely t’kill me before any of’em though. Could use someone ‘round what’s got a decent hand for stitchin’ up the real bad shit, and for shootin’ at the real bad shit too.”

He can’t believe he’s considering it, but this dimestore cowboy come to life seems like she’s got a decent head on her shoulders, even if someone seems to have tried blowing it off in recent history. And he is getting exactly nowhere with his “research.”

“I don’t exactly have the best bedside manner,” he warns her.

She snorts. “An’ I ain’t exactly one for conversatin’,” she replies easily.

“That’s fine, I’ll talk enough for the both of us.” He extends his hand, and she clasps it in her big, calloused one, her grip twitching just a bit before tightening to a nice, firm shake.

“Then we got ourselves a deal, Doctor…?”

“Gannon. Arcade Gannon.”

She chews the inside of her cheek, mulling over the name, before smiling. “You can call me Danger.”

And, honestly, that should have been warning enough.


End file.
